"I will not say too much about it,

   So diverse is the matter,

   Among those who are in the habit of telling

   And relating the story of Tristran."

   This is a specimen of the language which was in use among the
nobility of England, in the ages immediately after the Norman
conquest. The following is a specimen of the English that existed
at the same time, among the common people. Robert de Brunne,
speaking of his Latin and French authorities, says:

   "Als thai haf wryten and sayd

   Haf I alle in myn Inglis layd,

   In symple speche as I couthe,

   That is lightest in manne's mouthe.

   Alle for the luf of symple men,

   That strange Inglis cannot ken."

   The "strange Inglis" being the language of the previous specimen.

   It was not till toward the end of the thirteenth century that the
PROSE romances began to appear. These works generally began with
disowning and discrediting the sources from which in reality they
drew their sole information. As every romance was supposed to be a
real history, the compilers of those in prose would have forfeited
all credit if they had announced themselves as mere copyists of
the minstrels. On the contrary, they usually state that, as the
popular poems upon the matter in question contain many "lesings,"
they had been induced to translate the real and true history of
such or such a knight from the original Latin or Greek, or from
the ancient British or Armorican authorities, which authorities

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